"Then I must protest; and I beg you to
remember that I have protested against this
resolve on your part. Your family are not to say,
hereafter, that it was through any interference
or influence of ours that you took this unhappy
determination. I'll write, this very day, to your
father, and say so. There, it is striking seven
now!"

He made no reply; indeed, it seemed as if he
had not heard her.

"You might still be in time, if you were to
exert yourself," whispered she, with more
earnestness.

"I tell you again," said he, raising his voice
to a louder pitch, "that my place is here, and I
will not leave her."

A low, faint sigh was breathed by the sick
girl, and gently moving her hand, she laid it on
his head.

"You know me, then, dearest?" whispered he.
"You know who it is kneels beside you?"

She made no answer, but her feeble fingers
tried to play with his hair, and strayed,
unguided, over his head.

What shape of reproach, remonstrance, or
protest, Miss Grainger's mutterings took, is not
recorded; but she bustled out of the room,
evidently displeased with all in it.

"She knows you, Joseph. She is trying to
thank you," said Emily.

"Her lips are moving; can you hear what
she says, Milly?"

The girl bent over the bed, till her ear almost
touched her sister's mouth. "Yes, darling,
from his heart he does. He never loved you with
such devotion as now. She asks if you can forgive
her, Joseph. She remembers everything."

"And not leave me," sighed Florence, in a
voice barely audible.

"No, my own dearest, I will not leave you,"
was all that he could utter in the conflict of joy
and sorrow he felt. A weak attempt to thank
him she made by an effort to press his hand,
but it sent a thrill of delight through his heart,
more than a recompense for all he had suffered.

If Emily, with a generous delicacy, retired
towards the window and took up her work, not
very profitably perhaps, seeing how little light
came through the nearly closed shutters, let us
not show ourselves less discreet, and leave the
lovers to themselves. Be assured, dear reader,
that in our reserve on this point we are not less
mindful of your benefit than of theirs. The
charming things, so delightful to say and so
ecstatic to hear, are wonderfully tame to tell.
Perhaps their very charm is in the fact, that
their spell was only powerful to those who
uttered them. At all events, we are determined
on discretion, and shall only own that,
though Aunt Grainger made periodical visits to
the sick–room, with frequent references to the
hour of the day, and the departures and arrival
of various rail trains, they never heard her, or,
indeed, knew that she was present.

And though she was mistress of those "asides"
and that grand inuendo style which is so deadly
round a corner, they never paid the slightest
heed to her fire. All the adroit references to
the weather, and the "glorious day for travelling,"
went for naught. As well as the more
subtle compliments she made Florence on the
appetite she displayed for her chocolate, and
which were intended to convey that a young
lady who enjoyed her breakfast so heartily need
never have lost a man a passage to Calcutta for
the pleasure of seeing her eat it. Truth was,
Aunt Grainger was not in love, and,
consequently, no more fit to legislate for those who
were than a peasant in rude health is to sympathise
with the nervous irritability of a fine lady!
Neither was Milly in love, you will perhaps say,
and she felt for them. True, but Milly might
be—Milly was constitutionally exposed to the
malady, and the very vicinity of the disease was
what the faculty call a predisposing cause. It
made her very happy to see Joseph so fond, and
Florence so contented.

Far too happy to think of the price he paid
for his happiness, Loyd passed the day beside
her. Never before was he so much in love!
Indeed, it was not till the thought of losing her
for ever presented itself, that he knew or felt
what a blank life would hereafter become to him.
Some quaint German writer has it that these little
quarrels which lovers occasionally get up as a
sort of trial of their own powers of independence,
are like the attempts people make to
remain a long time under water, and which only
end in a profound conviction that their organisation
was unequal to the test. But there is
another form these passing differences occasionally
take. Each of the erring parties is sure to
nourish in his or her heart the feeling of being
most intensely beloved by the other! It is a
strange form for selfishness to take, but selfishness
is the most Protæan of all failings, and there
never was seen the mask it could not fit to its
face.

"And so you imagined you could cast me off,
Florence;" "And you, Master Joseph, had the
presumption to think you could leave me,"
formed the sum and substance of that long day's
whispering. My dear, kind reader, do not
despise the sermon from the seeming simplicity of
the text. There is a deal to be said on it, and
very pleasantly said, too. It is, besides, a sort
of litigation in which charge and cross charge
recur incessantly, and, as in all amicable suits,
each party pays his own costs.

It was fortunate, most fortunate, that their
reconciliation took this form. It enabled each
to do that which was most imminent to be done—
to ignore Calvert altogether, and never recur to
any mention of his name. Loyd saw that the
turquoise ring was no longer worn by her, and
she, with a woman's quickness, noted his
observation of the fact. I am not sure that in her
eyes a recognition of his joy did not glisten, but
she certainly never uttered a word that could
bring up his name.

"So I am your guest, madam, for ten days
more!" said Loyd to Miss Grainger, as they sat
at tea that night.

"Oh, we are only too happy. It is a very